


Interval

by HyacinthusAmongUs



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Multi, Music school AU, Well Lance thinks they're enemies, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-28 22:13:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11427264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HyacinthusAmongUs/pseuds/HyacinthusAmongUs
Summary: (noun)- the distance between two notes.Lance teaches guitar at a quaint little shop, trying to get some cash before senior year. Keith teaches piano at the same store. Lance hates Keith. Keith hasn't seemed to catch on yet. Between social media, attempts to buy out the store, and sultry acoustic covers of the Billboard 100 chart, maybe that hate will turn into something more harmonic.





	1. Chapter 1

Lance looked on from his car as Keith parked his motorcycle behind the shop. Keith dismounted smoothly, pulling his helmet off and shaking out his hair. Keith pushed a hand through the dramatic mop, unzipping his jacket while he did so. He reached down into his saddle bag, pulling out a water bottle and taking a drink, looking up to squint at the glaring Texan sun. 

“Ugh, he’s such an ass, why do I have to work with him,” Lance groaned, dramatically swooning back against his seat. Pidge couldn’t see through the phone, but from the sigh, she knew what he was doing. 

_“You know maybe if you just talked to him you wouldn’t think he’s such an ass?”_

Lance sunk down in his seat while Keith grabbed something from the saddle bag. He hadn’t noticed Lance, he usually didn’t. They’d been working together for more than a month and Keith hadn’t said more than ten words to Lance. Which, depending on who you asked (meaning Lance), was a total dick move. 

“Because Pidge, he’s an alien trying to learn our human ways and will kill me when he knows I’m onto him,” Lance told Pidge. He watched Keith accidentally get his backpack strap stuck on the handle of the backdoor and get slammed back by his hip. Keith fought to reclaim his backpack and weakly kicked the door before heading in. “He’s evil, Pidge. Pure evil.”

 _“He’s not an alien, Lance, he’s just kind of weird,”_ Pidge explained for the thousandth time in the past year.

Lance got out of the car slowly, crossing to the other side to get his guitar case from the backseat. He shoved his phone between his shoulder and cheek to keep ranting.

“Bro, tell me three things you know about Keith for sure.”

_“He works with you, he has a motorcycle, and you hate him.”_

“I meant personal information, but you are technically correct on all counts.”

Pidge sighed, louder and more pointedly than before. _“Interesting idea, why don’t you just talk to him? You know, like a person.”_

Lance slung his guitar case across his shoulder, kicking his car door shut. “It’s hard to have a heart-to-heart with someone who doesn’t have one.”

_“Go to work you dramatic ass.”_

“Love you too, nerd,” Lance said before hanging up. He shoved his phone into his back pocket, strolling into work humming under his breath. He ducked in through the back door, pointedly not getting his case stuck. 

As soon as the door shut behind him the temperature dropped about 30 degrees. To protect the instruments, the Castle of Lions Music Emporium was a cool 68 degrees year round. This meant Lance was stuck wearing a jacket in the middle of Texas summer. Any attempts to get Allura to point the shop away from being at risk for becoming an impromptu ice skating rink was met with a stern glare over her clipboard. 

“Good morning, Lance,” Allura called from her office, as if the mere act of thinking her name summoned her. She strolled out of her office, making five inch heels look like nothing. “New client today. Whatever you’re doing on the social media front, it’s working.”

“Everything I do works, in one way or another,” Lance said with a wink, accepting the clipboard Allura thrust at him with a roll of her eyes. 

“Well keep it up,” she nodded, closing her office door behind her. “We’re having a good month, but we can always do better.”

“Onwards and upwards,” Lance nodded, shifting his case on his shoulder and heading for the practice rooms. 

“Onwards and upwards,” Allura called after him. 

Down the hall, Lance found the room he usually did lessons in with the door ajar. Peeking in let him get his first glimpse of his new protegee and their concerned parent. This time it was the mother, a petite woman with a talk-to-the-manager bob. Her son, a kid of about 13 with long hair and a shiney guitar that looked brand new, looked at Lance with wide eyes. 

“Good morning,” Lance said, sliding into the room. “I’m Lance, and I’ll be your guitar instructor.”

“I’m Hayden,” the boy with the guitar said, awkwardly sliding the guitar into the empty seat next to him so he could shake Lance’s hand. 

The mom cleared her throat. “Lindsay,” she introduced, also shaking Lance’s hand. “I just had a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Not a bit, how can I help?”

Lindsay glanced wearily at her son’s guitar. “You’re teaching him how to read sheet music, yes?”

Lance nodded. “Better than English, ma’am. I can show you what we’ll be working with if you’d like?”

Lance gestured for Hayden to take his guitar and swung his case gently into the empty seat. He found the pouch on the inside where he kept his folder of sheet music and presented it to Lindsay. “I have that organized by difficulty. We’ll start with simple stuff, scales and what not, teach him basic chords and riffs. Eventually, when he feels he has a solid understanding, we’ll start working on harder stuff.”

“Will you teach me how to play popular songs?” Hayden asked, perking up. Lindsay’s apprehensive look returned. 

Lance chuckled, brushing a hand through his hair. “You can find sheet music for most songs online. Once you learn how to read that you’ll be able to play what you find, and if you bring it in I can help.”

Hayden looked at his mom and nodded enthusiastically. Lindsay smiled back, glancing over at Lance with a nod. “Twice a week sound okay?”

“Tuesdays and Thursdays good?”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Then twice a week sounds perfect, ma’am,” Lance nodded. “Now did you want to stay for the first lesson-”

“Oh, that’s alright,” Lindsay shook her head, reaching over to ruffle Hayden’s hair. He groaned at his mom, who just rolled her eyes. “I’m going to run a few errands. I’ll be back to pick him up in an hour.”

“Well it was nice to meet you ma’am,” Lance nodded, shaking her hand again. She smiled, walking out. Lance waited until she’d made her way down the hall to shut the door. 

“Don’t tell your mom but I’m also totally going to teach you how to play by ear,” Lance promised, glad their practice rooms were well sound-proofed. “Now, let’s see what we’re working with here, kiddo.”

Lance made grabby hands at the guitar balanced in Hayden’s lap until the boy handed it over. Lance glanced at it’s cherry red exterior approvingly. “Oscar Schmidt?”

“Yes sir,” Hayden said proudly, puffing up his chest. His hair was still a mess from where his mother had ruffled it. Lance held back a chuckle because he was a goddamn professional. “I bought it with my own money.”

“Nice. It’s a good guitar to start with, low maintenance,” Lance said, nodding approvingly. He handed the instrument back after quickly checking it was tuned. “Plus the paint job is usually hella slick.”

Before Hayden could respond, a sharp rapping came from the glass of the practice room door. Lance looked over, shocked to see Keith hanging out in the hall just outside. “One sec,” he told Hayden, going over and opening the door. “Yeah, what’s up?”

Keith glanced between Lance and Hayden, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. I left some sheet music in here yesterday, I think,” he said, eyes locking on a stand behind Lance. “Oh it’s right there.” 

Keith ducked under Lance’s arm and slipped into the room. Lance didn’t expect Keith to weaponize his shortness and whipped around to keep an eye on the other. “Wait, what were you doing in my room?”

Keith glanced up from where he was checking that all his sheet music was together, raising an eyebrow. The eyebrow seemed to say something along the lines of _‘this isn’t a house it’s a music store, we don’t have our own rooms’_ or something equally sarcastic. “Shiro needed my room to record something so Allura told me to use this one. Didn’t think you’d mind,” he said with a shrug, glancing over at Hayden. “Cool guitar.”

“Thanks,” Hayden said while Lance attempted to process exactly what Keith meant by _‘didn’t think you’d mind.’_

Keith nodded at Lance before seeing himself out. Lance pointedly shut the door behind him with a little more force than strictly necessary. Not enough to get Allura on his case for slamming doors (again), but enough to send a message. He hoped. 

“What does he play?” Hayden asked, glancing at the hall Keith disappeared down. 

_My fucking nerves._ “Piano,” Lance answered, digging his own guitar out of its case. His baby was an Ibanez, an electric-acoustic number in electric blue. “Keyboard, really. Total nerd instrument.”

“Guitar is cooler,” Hayden said. Lance grinned, dropping into his seat and high-fiving his new student.

“Rock on little dude,” he said, throwing his guitar strap over his shoulder . “Now let’s get started.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep in mind this is all written by a person with limited and most likely flawed knowledge of instagram. I've got no business being here. You've been warned.

Depending on who you asked (meaning Lance), Lance produced the best quality content for the Castle of Lion’s instagram account. It had been a long fight to get Allura to approve it, and an even longer fight to let Lance moderate. Eventually, an agreement fell into place; anyone could upload content, as long as they ran it by someone who had the password. Meaning Allura or Lance. Because of this, Lance had a lot of content on the account. Shiro posted something every now and then, but there weren’t exactly gaggles of kids lining up to play the violin. 

Keith, on the other hand, was pretty popular. Piano, especially keyboard, was something parents appreciated but kids still considered in the realm of cool. So Allura approved a lot of his videos, most of which she forced out of him, and Keith had almost equal representation on the instagram. 

Lance _hated_ it. 

It wasn’t the quality; Keith actually learned pretty fast what Lance’s standards were. While the first videos had only been shots of Keith’s hands on the keys, Allura had gotten him to move the camera real quick. Now his face was actually visible, and when he played, you could see the little crease that appeared between his brows, or the way his eyes would focus on the keys with laser precision. Lance originally watched the videos as a measure of quality control, but between the captivating tunes and Keith’s face, he had a hard time not watching them over and over. 

And that’s when he found the personal instagram. 

Working as a music instructor at Castle of Lions also meant doing some floor work. Usually Keith and Lance, when they worked the same days, would switch between practice rooms and the front of the store where they sold and repaired instruments. They usually didn’t work on the floor at the same time because they had more clients than Shiro, who taught violin, or Hunk, who taught percussion. Allura was either in her office or on the floor. 

After Hayden left and Lance finished the rest of his lessons, he found himself on the floor so Allura could do some paperwork. It was Shiro’s day off and Keith was teaching his last lesson, which left him alone and bored. Lance walked the entire floor, straightening displays and reorganizing the replacement strings, but with only an hour left before closing, there wasn’t much to do. He set up at the counter so he could see if anyone came in, before sneaking out his phone and checking instagram. 

Keith’s latest video, a piano cover of Believer by Imagine Dragons, already had almost 2,000 likes, and it was only a day old. Lance grumbled, turning down his volume in case Allura was lurking about and playing the video.

It was short, but spirited. Keith really knew how to slam on the keys when the song called for it. Lance listened twice, trying to translate it to guitar, before checking the description. 

That’s new, Lance thought, seeing _@KeithKogane_ at the end. He clicked it, pulling up a relatively new profile with over a thousand followers. Lance clicked on the most recent post, a video of Keith playing, and held his phone up by his ear to listen better. 

Lance didn’t immediately recognize the song, although it sounded familiar. He realized what it was a second before he heard Keith start singing. He didn’t even realize Keith listened to music like that outside of work, but there he was, recording a minute of Location by Khalid. 

Lance was instantly pissed. Keith’s voice was beautiful, lying over the music like a silk sheet. _Why the fuck wasn’t he sharing with the class?_

“What are you listening to?”

Lance nearly jumped out of his skin, whipping around to spot Allura. She was leaning on the counter, and judging from the height of her eyebrow, she had been for a while. Lance was so busy steaming that he hadn’t noticed. He recovered from his shock to thrust his phone at Allura. She took it, turning up the video and watching. 

“This is very good,” she said. She looked down at the notes, then back up to Lance. “I didn’t know he had a personal account.”

“He didn’t!” Lance said, flailing his arm at the phone. “He just made it like yesterday or something, and look at the followers!”

Allura did, eyes widening slightly. “Oh wow. Good for Keith.”

“Since when can he sing?”

She shrugged, handing the phone back over. “It’s never really come up, surprisingly.”

Lance looked through the account, noticing only three videos and one picture had been posted in it’s whole day and a half of existence. Lance had already made twice that many posts to his personal account in the seven hours since clocking in between his personal account and the official one. “He should’ve told us! Look how many people like him singing.”

Allura pursed her lips, taking out her own phone and pulling up Keith’s account. Lance noticed she began following him before she started looking at the bio. 

“Perhaps,” she said, “Keith figured he doesn’t teach singing, he teaches piano. He links back to us in his bio, which is nice. I’ll ask him about it before close.”

With that, Allura turned on her heel. “Oh, and try to be a little less obvious about playing on your phone Lance, don’t want to look that bored.”

“Yes ma’am,” Lance called after her, looking back at his phone the moment she’d was gone. The follow button glared up at him. Keith was following three accounts; Hans Zimmer, Shiro, and Castle of Lions. Lance narrowed his eyes at his phone. Surely Keith was aware of Lance’s instagram? He had to be; it’d been plastered all over Lance’s content for as long as the official account had been a thing. 

“Fine, _don’t_ follow me,” Lance muttered, shutting his phone down. He shoved it in his pocket, slumping over the counter dramatically. He straightened when the bell over the door rang, plastering a smile on. “Welcome to the Castle of Lions, how can I help you?”

Lance spent the rest of the hour talking up an amp for two dude’s trying to start a garage band, going through every model they had and weighing the pros and cons. By the time he’d rung them up and gotten Allura to watch the front so he could help them load their new purchase into a beaten up Kia, he’d almost forgotten Keith’s account. 

He came back in right as Keith was walking his last client out. “Just remember to work on the dexterity in your ring fingers,” he told the girl with blue streaks in her short bob. He waggled his own ring fingers, which served to highlight his fingerless gloves. _Dork_ , Lance thought. Keith’s client snorted at him fondly. “They can be a lot more mobile than you think.”

Keith’s client held her hands up, waggling her ring fingers at him in agreement. Lance noted they did seem a bit stiff before noting _holy shit Keith ‘my favorite song is a baby grand piano crying’ Kogane was smiling?_

“See you next week, Tammy.”

“Later hater,” Tammy waved, passing Lance on her way out. Keith shook his head fondly, glancing over to Allura. “What else needs doing?”

“Not much,” Allura admitted, looking over the store. “A little bit of dusting, maybe clean the counters. Slow day, you two are going home early.”

“Cool,” Keith nodded, turning to grab the cleaning supplies from the back.

“Just a moment,” Allura said. Keith turned to look at her. “Lance noticed you have your own instagram account now.”

Lance whipped his head around to glare at Allura. Traitor, he thought. She rolled her eyes at him. Keith nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Yeah, I was going to tell you before work but I forgot,” he said, looking down at his shoes. “Shiro said I should have an official account so I can start, um, I think his words were ‘control my brand?’”

Allura nodded, chuckling. “Sounds like Shiro alright,” she agreed. “You didn’t have to tell me, but I appreciate the courtesy. And mentioning the shop. If you continue getting followers at this rate it could really help us out.”

“No problem,” Keith said. 

Lance floated in the back of this conversation, watching the two like a well-matched tennis game. When Allura left, Keith pretty much immediately put his headphones in and got to work cleaning. Lance sighed, following his lead. He tried not to waste any time wondering what music had Keith nodding his head like that. 

_(Tried.)_

They were ready to leave half an hour later, having dusted and swept and wiped to Allura’s content. She gave them her blessing to clock out and in no time, Lance and Keith were outside. 

“You know, I would’ve appreciated the heads up,” Lance said to Keith while he stripped off his jacket. Keith glanced up from his phone with a raised brow. “I mean instagram is just kind of my area and-”

“You didn’t tell anyone about your account,” Keith countered.

“Yeah but I had one before the official store one went up.”

Keith rolled his eyes, swinging his backpack around to slip into a pocket. He redid the zipper with brutal efficiency. “You know, you never once talked to me about the official instagram. I didn’t even think you wanted me on it until Allura started bothering me for videos,” he said, digging his keys out. “If you don’t like me that’s fine, but don’t pretend this is about business.”

Lance felt his jaw drop without his permission. “Wait, what are you talking about?”

Keith moved to his bike, shoving his backpack in the saddle bag. He glanced over his shoulder as he got out his helmet. “See you tomorrow, Lance.”

Before Lance could respond Keith swung his leg over the seat and started the bike. He pulled his helmet on and peeled out the other end of the alley, leaving Lance with more questions than answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eventually this is gonna have plot, I'm just shoving exposition at y'all like it's my job. And if you want to look at some of the inspiration for this chapter, the Piano Theorist on youtube is a really good source for piano covers. I believe he covered Location.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr at [ hyacinthusau](http://hyacinthusau.tumblr.com/) and bother me about updating this regularly.


End file.
